Object data
oil on panel
support: height 41.5 cm × width 52 cm
outer size: depth 5 cm (support incl. frame)
Vincent Malò (II) (attributed to)
Two Men at Cards Outside a Country Inn
c. 1650
Inscriptions
- signature, in monogram, bottom left, on the broken jar: vm
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 23 January 2006
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 June 2010
Provenance
…; sale, Thomas Count of Fraula (1646-1738, Brussels), Brussels (auction house not known), 11 July 1738 sqq., no. 335 (‘Eene Vergaederinge op een Landtschap, waer Van Dyk met de kaert speelt met Rubbens, van vele figuren, door Van Dyck, hoog eenen v. 6 duym, breet eenen v. 10 duym [47.1 x 57.5 cm]’), fl. 310;1…; sale, Gerard Bicker, Lord of Swieten (1687-1753, Amsterdam, Zoeterwoude, The Hague), The Hague (Eyhoff), 12 April 1741 sqq., no. 26 (‘Een geselschap in een dorp, daar van Dyk en Rubbens met de Kaart speeld, en Brouwer daar by sit, met vele figuren […] door den selve [Van Dyck] hoog 1 voet 4 duim breed 1 voet 8 duym [41.9 x 52.3 cm]’), bought in at fl. 250;2 sale, Gerard Bicker van Swieten, The Hague (auction house not known), 4 April 1755, no. 7 (‘Een gezelschap in een Dorp, daar van Dyk en Rubbens met de Kaart speelen, en Brouwer daar by zit, met veel Figuuren […] door Antony van Dyk, hoog 1 voet 4 duim, breet 1 voet 8 duim [41.8 x 52.3 cm]’), fl. 328;3…; collection Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague;4 his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘Tableau très particulier représentant van Dijck et Rubens jouant aux cartes, le peintre Brouwer derrière eux qui les regarde, tous trois en habits de paysans, avec beaucoup d’accessoires, bois, h. 16 1. 20 [40.6 x 50.8 cm]’);5 from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 18096
Object number: SK-A-590
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Vincent Malò II (Antwerp (?) 1629 - Antwerp 1656/57)
Little is known as yet about the small-scale figure painter Vincent Malò II. Soprani records that Vincent Malò I married in Genoa;7 in fact, this would have been his second marriage, his first had been in Antwerp to Anna de Smillano in 1623, from which a daughter was born in 16278 and a son supposedly in 1629;9 the latter is probably identifiable with the Fincent (sic) Malò listed as a wynmeester (son of a master) in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1652/53.10 His mother may have died before his father’s departure for Italy in circa 1634, and he may have remained with his father there until the latter’s death some ten years later. His Italian upbringing is suggested by the Italianized form of his Christian name in the record of a request, made in April 1651, to hold an auction sale of his paintings before leaving Antwerp11 (a plan evidently not of long duration, as he soon thereafter registered as a master in the guild). Two years before he may have acted as an agent, acquiring four Italian masters at the Commonwealth sale of the possessions of King Charles I in London.12 His widow paid the customary funeral dues to the Antwerp guild in 1656/57,13 which of course also provides evidence of his death in the city sometime in this accounting period. There is a record of one lost painting securely by Vincent Malò II, a Courtyard of a Country Inn which is recorded as signed and dated V.Malo 1647.14
Entry
The attribution of the present painting to Vincent Malò (that is Vincent Malò I), first published in the 1887 catalogue, has much to commend it. But as discussed below, it is problematic. The difficulties in the way of it tend to favour an attribution to his homonymous son, a view with which Schepers tends to agree.15
The monogram, like that on the other painting by Malò in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-781), is inscribed in a deliberately inconspicuous manner and was not detected until the 1880s; its form is documented in an inventory of a deceased, Antwerp estate made in 1644.16 The present support is one of oak, which would have been ready for use from 1626, more probably from 1632; the reverse was coated in a ground in a manner typical of Antwerp practice.17 This would suggest that the painting was executed there rather than south of the Alps; whether such a support could have been available to the Flemish community of artists in Genoa is an open question, touched on below. But significant is Malò’s departure from Antwerp in 1634 or there abouts, never to return.
This is of relevance because the style and tone of the present depiction of a country inn is different from that of peasant scenes by other artists active in Antwerp in the first half or so of the 1630s, for instance, those by Adriaen Brouwer (1603/05-1638)18, and David Teniers II (1610-1690),19 let alone Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640),20 and perhaps to be included here, by Cornelis Saftleven (1607-1681).21 The two roughly executed peasant interiors in the De Geus van den Heuvel sale, which have been attributed to Vincent Malò I, seem more in line with the outspoken and uninhibited genre scenes of that time,22 characteristics evident enough in two peasant interiors at Dresden and the Castello Sforzesca, Milan, which have been attributed to the artist at the RKD.23
Another factor that would point to a date of execution after the mid-1630s is the influence of Cornelis de Wael (1592-1667) in the handling and emphasis on profiles. Indeed, the physiognomy of the bald card player in the Rijksmuseum picture is similar to the drinker with a pitcher in the first state of an etching of an inn scene attributed to De Wael and datable to circa 1640-50,24 while the dog makes an appearance in Gustus engraved by Alexander Voet (1613-1689/90) after De Wael.25 Soprani records that Malò I executed ‘very nice and valuable little panels’26 in the early years of his activity in Genoa. And it is possible that Antwerp supports were available in Genoa.27
However, the detached, amused depiction of country and peasant life conveyed here is more in tune with Teniers’s vision in the early 1640s28 and later; if this is accepted then the possible role of Malò’s son becomes relevant. The few known facts about his life are given above; it is assumed that he remained with his father until around the time of the latter’s death in Rome and then returned to Antwerp. There his expertise in Italian art was recognized by his putative journey to London to acquire paintings from Charles I’s collection and he produced a body of works before his enrolment in the guild, in which could have been the Courtyard of an Inn of 1647 referred to above.29 To judge from a scan of the reproduction in the 1898 sale catalogue, its setting and idiom are sufficiently similar to the Rijksmuseum painting as to warrant its ascription to him. But that the 1647 Courtyard is signed with the artist’s surname in full while the museum courtyard is signed with the same monogram as used (but perhaps not exclusively) by Vincent Malò I indicates how finely balanced is the matter of the latter’s attribution.
The principal figures, seated at the upturned barrel in the present picture, appear to be of a higher social rank than the drinkers nearby. The wishful identifications advanced in the Fraula and Bicker sale catalogues were rejected in the 1858 museum catalogue; nevertheless, even granted the possible appearance of the older man in the print attributed to De Wael, referred to above, it seems that these figures were intended to evoke in some ways an as yet unidentified jocular event.
Gregory Martin, 2022
Literature
M.G. Rutteri, ‘Vincenzo Malò dal manierismo al barocco’, Bollettino Liguistico 18 (1966), pp. 121-48, esp. p. 132, fig. 10 and p. 145; E. Greindl, M.-L. Hairs, M. Kervyn de Meerendre, M. Klinge, B. Schifflers and Y. Thiery, De zeventiende eeuw: De gouden eeuw van de Vlaamse schilderkust, Antwerp 1989, p. 209
Collection catalogues
1809, p. 20, no. 82 (as by Van Dyck, depicting Rubens, Van Dyck and Brouwer); 1843, p. 18, no. 84 [as ‘nothing to do with Van Dyck’, an unknown hand in the style of David Teniers II]; 1853, p. 35, no. 363 [unknown, fl. 500]; 1858, pp. 191-92, no. 431 (as unknown, a country inn); 1880, p. 194, no. 211 (as Carel van Mander, a peasant company); 1885, p. 30, no. 211 (as signed M v.L.); 1887, p. 106, no. 894 (as attributed to Vincent Malo, a peasant company); 1903, p. 168, no. 1514 (as attributed to Vincent Malo); 1976, p. 360, no. A 590 (as Vincent Malo)
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'attributed to Vincent (II) Malò, Two Men at Cards Outside a Country Inn, c. 1650', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8963
(accessed 28 December 2024 17:23:49).